Farallones survivor: Sailors must rethink safety

If he had to do it over again, Bryan Chong would tether himself to the sailboat.

Chong, one of three sailors to survive the deadly wreck of the racing boat Low Speed Chase at the Farallon Islands earlier this month, said that if he had attached himself to the craft, he might have avoided 15 terrifying minutes in water he likened to “a washing machine filled with boulders.”

And if his crewmates had done the same, Chong said, the five who died might still be alive.

Chong, 38, of Belvedere, is only one of three survivors from the Low Speed Chase. He described in detail what happened April 14 when the 38-foot boat was flipped by a wave and thrown against the jagged rocks of South Farallon Island. He made his comments in a lengthy post on the sailing website Sailing Anarchy.

In a frank account of the wreck, Chong said sailors don’t spend enough time talking about safety and that he considers himself lucky to “have a second chance at life, with my wife and 8-week-old son.”

Chong said there was nothing at the outset of the Full Crew Farallones Race that indicated the boat would be in any danger on the 54-mile round trip to the islands off San Francisco. The Low Speed Chase fell behind early, and “the mood on the boat is relaxed,” he wrote. “We’ve accepted our place in the back of the pack now, so there is no need to risk equipment or safety. Our mind set is definitely not aggressive.”

Even when the boat rounded South Farallon Island in a gap between a violent surf break and the rocky shore, the situation didn’t seem abnormal, Chong said. Suddenly, and without much warning, the boat was in the path of a large wave.

“It’s coming from the same direction as the other swells, but it’s massive,” Chong wrote. “I’ve seen large waves before, but this is unlike anything I’ve even seen outside of big-wave surf videos.”

As the wave approached, Alan Cahill, a professional sailor who was at the helm, turned the boat into the “a wall of crashing water” to try to avert disaster, Chong wrote.

“The last thing I see is the boat tipping toward vertical with a band of water still above it,” Chong said. “A single thought races through my head: ‘This is going to be bad.’”

Chong was thrown underwater while the boat surfed backward on the wave, turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise and barrel-rolled.

“I was under water until the boat righted itself,” Chong said. “Confused and disoriented, I looked around while water cleared off the deck. Nick (Vos) and I were the only ones still on the boat. The sails were shredded, the mast snapped and every flotation device had been ripped off.”

As he and Vos, who broke his leg while clinging to the boat, tried to drag their fellow crew members back on board, a second wave struck from behind, ripping Chong off the boat and throwing him into the water.

The wave tossed the 15,000-pound boat high on the island’s rocks, where it stayed until Monday, when a helicopter airlifted it to Half Moon Bay.

Chong, who like all members of the crew was wearing a life jacket, floated in the frigid, frothing waters of the Pacific for 15 minutes before dragging himself onto the island. “Those 15 minutes in the water were the absolute scariest in my life,” he wrote.

“People have asked me if I swam for shore,” Chong said. “The best way to describe the water in the break zone is a washing machine filled with boulders. You don’t really swim. The water took me where it wanted to take me.”

He found Vos and James Bradford, the owner and captain of the boat, clinging to the island’s rocks.

“From what we could see, nobody else had been able to climb to safety,” Chong wrote.

Vos, Bradford and Chong stayed on the island until rescuers from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Air National Guard arrived.

The body of one sailor, Marc Kasanin, was recovered. Four others — Cahill, Alexis Busch, Jordan Fromm and Elmer Morrissey — were lost at sea.

None of the eight crew members was attached to the boat by a tether, which isn’t uncommon among seasoned sailors, Chong said.

“It’s simply a bad habit that formed due to a false sense of security in the ocean,” he said. “It’s obvious to me now that I should have been clipped into the boat at every possible opportunity.”

Chong added, “Until the accident, I believe that to tether or not was a personal choice. But now my thinking extends beyond the safety of an individual to that of the team as a whole. … One person overboard puts the entire crew at risk.”

San Francisco police investigated the wreck and found no signs of criminal negligence, said District Attorney George Gascón. He said the deadly wreck was nothing more than a “terrible tragedy.”

“Hopefully this incident will spur a wider discussion on sailboat safety,” Chong wrote. “However, the biggest lesson I learned that day wasn’t about any piece of equipment. It was about taking personal responsibility for my own safety.”

Video of the conditions about an hour before the crash taken from another sailboat competing in the same race: